Anyone who has ever filled out a web form would have come across a distorted sequence of numbers and letters called Captcha. Invented to curb the use of machines filling online forms, the Captcha has evolved over the years into a more user-friendly system.Last week, Google introduced the Invisible Captcha and one no longer has to squint at disorganised characters to prove they are human. Here’s a breakdown of the reason for the invention and the evolution of Captcha.
- Developed in the year 2000 by Luis van Ahn and his team at the Carnegie Mellon University.
- It’s a test to tell computers and humans apart
- Eg: Ticketing websites use Captcha to prevent automated programmes to enter their system, register multiple accounts and book thousands of tickets by submitting the form again and again. These tickets in turn could be resold by scalpers and Captcha helps prevent this.
- Company van Ahn started in 2007 Helped digitise books in addition to preventing fraud online
- Was started with the insight to put to use all the time people spent by deciphering illegible characters
- Caught the attention of Google which acquired the co in 2009 Google used it to power large volumes of scanning projects for
- Google Books and news archives
- Co took words from books, which the computers could not recognise, and gave it to users to decipher
Evolution
- Next step was when Google created the “I’m not a Robot” checkbox where users are able to attest themselves with the click of a button
- This helped differentiate bots from humans
- Most bots click the centre of a rectangular box rather than ticking the checkbox
- The latest is the ‘Invisible CAPTCHA’ introduced last week
- It can recognise a bot from a human just by analysing its browsing pattern
- This crowdsourced model has paved the way for van Ahn to cofound Duolingo, a languagelearning startup
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